Western Digital TV

Priced at US $100 Western Digital’s (WD) HD media player, known as WD TV, is designed to give users the ability to playback content on standard or HD display devices with minimal fuss.

As a result of this positioning, the TV lacks WiFi and network capabilities and instead allows you to access content by physically connecting a USB-based hard drive or flash drive. The WD is flexible here because it allows you to connect two USB devices simultaneously. This somewhat makes up for the lack of a dedicated internal drive but will add bulk to your overall setup. This is a shame as the TV itself is quite compact.

The WD features HDMI and RCA output ports and while the inclusion of both is a plus point, we’d also have liked to have seen Component outputs. This is simply because older HD and Full HD screens won’t have HDMI ports and connecting the TV via RCA to these displays would prevent you from viewing 720p or 1080p content properly.

The WD’s graphics user interface (GUI) is clean and is easy enough to navigate using the supplied remote. It also offers all the essential functions when dealing with photos, movies or music; you can zoom in on photos, create slide shows, search for music via genre or artist etc.

The WD TV supports a plethora of file formats when it comes to audio, photos and movies though it lacks playback support when dealing with premium content from the iTunes Store, Cinema Now, Movielink, Amazon Unbox and Vongo.